guardian452 wrote:No, sorry, I hate those morons and I love apple and all the other technology vendors for consistently pissing them off. That backwards head-up-the-ass mentality is a skid mark on the underpants of society. We should all go back to horse drawn carriages because those are easier to figure out than fuel injection.

Modern technology requires modern repair techniques. If a broke college kid can't fix it in a dorm room with a $4.99 screwdriver kit from harbor freight, well, I don't really give a damn. And if you can't afford to replace a $20 charging cable once in a while, and complain that the cheap knockoffs trigger an MFI warning, maybe you shouldn't have spent $800 on the damn phone in the first place.

Sorry, I've got to disagree with you there. The iFixit guys generally have no major problem with using modern technology to disassemble things, and in fact sell toolkits full of modern tools for this very job. However when you have a laptop that has a battery which is held in with mountains of glue and is almost impossible to replace without destroying the laptop, the company deserves to be slated for it.

In comparison, my wife has a Samsung Series 9 laptop which is just as thin and slim as a Macbook Air. Remove a few torq screws and the bottom pops off. Remove four more screws and a little connector and the battery pops out. Same with the X1 Carbon I have here. The RAM soldering is a bit more understandable on very slim laptops like these, but on the Mac Mini where the case and removable bottom panel stayed the same as the previous version? Inexcusable. Same goes for the Macbook Pro where it's all now soldered in, despite these supposedly being larger and more professional workstations.

It's not a "modern construction technique", it's a deliberate ploy to ensure the kit gets thrown away after a few years and replaced as soon as anything goes wrong with it. It's deliberate obsolescence.

guardian452 wrote:No, sorry, I hate those morons and I love apple and all the other technology vendors for consistently pissing them off. That backwards head-up-the-ass mentality is a skid mark on the underpants of society. We should all go back to horse drawn carriages because those are easier to figure out than fuel injection.

Modern technology requires modern repair techniques. If a broke college kid can't fix it in a dorm room with a $4.99 screwdriver kit from harbor freight, well, I don't really give a damn. And if you can't afford to replace a $20 charging cable once in a while, and complain that the cheap knockoffs trigger an MFI warning, maybe you shouldn't have spent $800 on the damn phone in the first place.

Sorry, I've got to disagree with you there. The iFixit guys generally have no major problem with using modern technology to disassemble things, and in fact sell toolkits full of modern tools for this very job. However when you have a laptop that has a battery which is held in with mountains of glue and is almost impossible to replace without destroying the laptop, the company deserves to be slated for it.

In comparison, my wife has a Samsung Series 9 laptop which is just as thin and slim as a Macbook Air. Remove a few torq screws and the bottom pops off. Remove four more screws and a little connector and the battery pops out. Same with the X1 Carbon I have here. The RAM soldering is a bit more understandable on very slim laptops like these, but on the Mac Mini where the case and removable bottom panel stayed the same as the previous version? Inexcusable. Same goes for the Macbook Pro where it's all now soldered in, despite these supposedly being larger and more professional workstations.

It's not a "modern construction technique", it's a deliberate ploy to ensure the kit gets thrown away after a few years and replaced as soon as anything goes wrong with it. It's deliberate obsolescence.

Apple's battery replacement service is cheaper than a replacement battery part from lenovo, for a bigger battery and recycling of the old one. Noboy else is getting 1k-2k+ cycles out of li-ions, tho. That's pushing into LiFePO4 territory. The tools ifixit sells are rebranded chinese junk that can be bought on alibaba or even amazon/HF for less than 1/10 their price. They have an interesting market cornered and it's just not something I agree with. They should be teaching real diagnostic techniques, real repair (what we call what they are doing is "parts swapping" and occasionally "parts-cannon firing"), ESD safety, etc. There is more to electronics repair than teardown and rebuild. I guess they are the electronics equivalent to autozone etc. Cheap knockoff parts and even cheaper "advice".

Raion-Fox wrote:I can plug an OBD II scanner in, see everything the car's doing while its running in real time.

same analogy applies. Good luck fixing anything with a $300 walmart scanner, haynes book, and no training. Maybe maintenance on a 20 year old honda. So-called "real mechanics" (that work at jiffy lube, midas) buy diagnostic tools from mahle, snap-on, kvaser, etc, and a subscription to Alldata. But once you try manufacturer equipment (Witech, IDS, Tech-II, for the american big 3, a dealer license to the original service manuals and wiring diagrams)... You realize what a hack the reverse-engineered stuff is. Oh yes, good mechanics also spend several weeks every year at tech conferences and training classes.

In comparison, my wife has a Samsung Series 9 laptop which is just as thin and slim as a Macbook Air. Remove a few torq screws and the bottom pops off. Remove four more screws and a little connector and the battery pops out.

Just like a macbook.

Chrysler is for cars - a shell of a once great company that makes absolute horseshit and won't ever amount to anything more than your PCP-hyped boss's poor man's "Bentley" flying brick that leaks more oil than an RX-7 in sub-zero weather.

Are you sure? I just bought a challenger for my wife and it's pretty good. It's daimler roots are showing in the switchgear and instruments (at least Uconnect is infinitely better than COMAND). The switches are also recycled by tesla etc. I would put them above honda/toyota but below acura/lexus/mazda, and a world apart from anything GM has made in the last 40 years. The 8 speed is smooth and competent, the v6 has more power than my v8 trans am from 15 years ago had. It's not exactly my style but I will say it's one of the best cars on the road. It's a refined mashup of w220 and w211 which means a very heavy and numb car, but, it's what she wanted. Had a failed BCM module, but the part is only $190 (I have a dealer account), it was easy to diagnose (see above for having the correct tools for the job!) and it still worked fine driving as it's a minor issue (says right-front turn signal is out on IPC but it's still working, all LED bulb on this car). The dealer knocked couple thousand off, a less than 2 year old car with only 50k miles, for this minor issue.

RX7's don't leak oil, they burn it

I could replace the shunt inside the BCM for $0.50 but the conformal coating they use sort of discourages that, and I bet the issue will be in the MCU because it's a fairly common problem.

However, I drove the gawd-awful jeep renegade (fiat 500L-based hatchback) and take back everything I just said. FCA needs to take the entire jeep brand out back and put six shots in the back of it's head

Last edited by guardian452 on Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, no. With the latest MacBook pro, the battery is held in with glue, and a LOT of it, whereas the Samsung's battery can be removed in less than a minute with a standard screwdriver. Still, at least the bottom is screwed on with the MBP. The latest MacBook's battery is also held in with huge amounts of glue as well, and is difficult to replace as a result. Furthermore, even the flash RAM is soldered down (and this is on the Pro). Wear out the SSD and your expensive Macbook is destined for a one-way trip to the bin.

I do agree that iFixit's tools are overpriced. Of course, they wouldn't be nearly so necessary if companies like Apple stuck to standard screws to hold their kit together. When servicing my wife's Samsung laptop, or either of my ThinkPads, a standard toolkit of Phillips/Torq screws are fine for everything. It's Apple with their propriety tri-blade/pentalobe screws and glue everywhere that requires all sorts of new tools.

Esqueeze me, the ssd is one of the items on my macbook pro I've upgraded already. Held on with one screw. Do you buy into the FUD to the point where you think vertical-market supreme, Apple, Inc, is going to make different logic board parts for different disk sizes?

And I pulled the battery out just to get in a really good cleaning while I was in there. Only the new crappy models are they glued in. Replacement *service* at an Apple store is cheaper than other vendor's parts so I don't see how they are not competitive in that area. Assuming the other vendor even offers parts long enough for a battery to become worn. HP discontinues after a year or less, for example. Multiply energy storage by number of cycles and you will see how good of a value apple batteries are. Other vendors also tend to use theoretical values for specs pulled out their ass for battery lifetime. I have seen lenovo batteries completely useless after 300 cycles but rated for 1000.

I have macbookpro11, 1. Never thought I would be defending apple like this Disclaimer: I develop electric vehicle (heavy trucks) battery controls and telemetry for my day job. As an insider I find apples battery technology impressive. It's the best in the consumer industry. I will criticize anything else about them.

Forget about ifixit junk and buy a set of Wiha drivers. Apple uses those themselves.

I am genuinely curious to know how many people here have had to have an apple laptop battery replaced on a machine made within the last 5 years, other than damage due to drop/flood/fire/etc. How many cycles were on it and what was the useable capacity down to? Did you have Apple replace it or a 3rd party shop with genuine or 3rd party part? How much did it cost? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Because when I sold my 2010 macbook air in 2015, it had almost 800 cycles on it and the battery was well over 70% of design capacity.

The macbook "pro" is dead, it died in 2006 (intel), 2009 (unibody), 2012 (retina), and 2016 (thunderbolt-3). They are definitely dead by now and only garbage consumables. Meanwhile they continue to be used professionally (e.g. people use them in business to make money, not to wave around like a dried bull pizzle) every day.

Buy applecare (I never did). And backup backup backup. There are apple stores with quick and easy (if not necessarily cheap) service in every corner of the USA.

If your disk died in an old model, your data was also hosed. Those SSDs were never inexpensive to replace to begin with. I paid $700 to upgrade my $1200 MBP, more than half the value of the machine when new and probably what the entire machine was worth at the time of upgrade. But I expect if I ever sell a used laptop like this one, if I get more than two pennies to rub together I must be doing pretty good. It's not a good investment strategy, you're better off going to vegas. I got 5 years out of my old one and it was knocked around a LOT, I should get 8-10 years out of this one no problem as it has a cushy existence on a desk and rarely leaves the house at all anymore. If it dies anyways, well, that's life Probably won't be getting another one.

The probability of those SSD things failing are so low something else on the logic board will likely go first. If you want a machine with that kind of integration, go buy one. If you don't, I don't see how it existing on the market will hurt you. Not exactly my cup o' tea either, I like my 2014 model, still. Besides, sellers will continue to put refurbished thinkpad T61's on ebay until the heat death of the universe. There are brand new models that are just as serviceable out there. Look at the CF-54 toughbook from Panasonic. The market for serviceable and rugged laptops is shrinking, but by no means is it ever going away completely.

commodorejohn wrote:You don't understand, tomvos! It has to be that way!! We'll never get to The Future if you ignorant cavemen keep holding us back with demands for archaic non-solderered connectors!!!

It was for Lion (2011) where the Ars Technica Siracusa review said something like "It appears Apple has gotten tired of dragging us kicking and screaming into the future, and has simply left without us." It's what Apple does best

guardian452 wrote:Apple's battery replacement service is cheaper than a replacement battery part from lenovo, for a bigger battery and recycling of the old one. Noboy else is getting 1k-2k+ cycles out of li-ions, tho. That's pushing into LiFePO4 territory. The tools ifixit sells are rebranded chinese junk that can be bought on alibaba or even amazon/HF for less than 1/10 their price. They have an interesting market cornered and it's just not something I agree with. They should be teaching real diagnostic techniques, real repair (what we call what they are doing is "parts swapping" and occasionally "parts-cannon firing"), ESD safety, etc. There is more to electronics repair than teardown and rebuild. I guess they are the electronics equivalent to autozone etc. Cheap knockoff parts and even cheaper "advice".

Lenovo is one data point. Also, there's far more third party options for non-Apple laptops.

Diagnostics for modern PCs aren't anything like cars, so please stop trying to draw a false equivalence. In a car, you have hundreds of discrete components that can go wrong. For a computer, it's a handful of integrated components where you can generally draw a good guess.

guardian452 wrote::lol: same analogy applies. Good luck fixing anything with a $300 walmart scanner, haynes book, and no training. Maybe maintenance on a 20 year old honda. So-called "real mechanics" (that work at jiffy lube, midas) buy diagnostic tools from mahle, snap-on, kvaser, etc, and a subscription to Alldata. But once you try manufacturer equipment (Witech, IDS, Tech-II, for the american big 3, a dealer license to the original service manuals and wiring diagrams)... You realize what a hack the reverse-engineered stuff is. Oh yes, good mechanics also spend several weeks every year at tech conferences and training classes.

I'm 23 years old and can read a manual. Can you? It isn't hard at all to diagnose a car. If it says, say P01000 - O2 sensor heater circuit failed Bank 1, you know the first O2 sensor is broken. Or if it says the crankshaft position signal is out of bounds, replace the CPS! Not much harder than that.

guardian452 wrote:Just like a macbook.

Ahem - 2016 and up Macbooks would bear a second look. NOTHING is easily replaceable.

guardian452 wrote:Are you sure? I just bought a challenger for my wife and it's pretty good. It's daimler roots are showing in the switchgear and instruments (at least Uconnect is infinitely better than COMAND). The switches are also recycled by tesla etc. I would put them above honda/toyota but below acura/lexus/mazda, and a world apart from anything GM has made in the last 40 years. The 8 speed is smooth and competent, the v6 has more power than my v8 trans am from 15 years ago had. It's not exactly my style but I will say it's one of the best cars on the road. It's a refined mashup of w220 and w211 which means a very heavy and numb car, but, it's what she wanted.

Guarantee it won't last 100k without massively expensive repairs. I worked in a mechanic shop and replaced engines in those all the time. The cheap rubber hoses they use for coolant redirection rot, the coolant leaks out and the headgasket blows. Bye bye engine.

guardian452 wrote:RX7's don't leak oil, they burn it

Not if you try running them in freezing cold weather. They will leak from the front seal because it won't expand from the cold.

guardian452 wrote:Esqueeze me, the ssd is one of the items on my macbook pro I've upgraded already. Held on with one screw. Do you buy into the FUD to the point where you think vertical-market supreme, Apple, Inc, is going to make different logic board parts for different disk sizes?

What tomvos said. They *used* to be upgradable (the SSD is now soldered onto the board), in much the same way that it *used* to be possible to upgrade the RAM in a Mac Mini until recently, but now you can't. And believe me, if my Mac Mini was still stuck with its original 512MB of RAM and 80GB hard drive, it'd long since have been obsolete for me. Even if I'd paid through the nose at Apple prices for 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, it'd still be bordering on useless now.

Buy a new Macbook now and try upgrading *anything* on it and you're SOL, because Apple wants you to throw it away after a few years. And if you do want to pay for a higher-spec one direct from Apple, expect to pay at least three to four times the price of those components if you bought them yourself from a shop.

In comparison, my current (ThinkPad X201) laptop was new in 2010 and had 2GB of RAM and a 250GB mechanical hard drive. However because it's upgradable, it still chugs along very nicely now with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Oh, and for what it's work, Lenovo still sell original new batteries for it and they're $85, whereas a new battery fitted by Apple to the latest MacBook will set you back $200. As it is, I'm still using the original battery. Yes, it's not as good as it used to be, but even with moderate usage, it still gives me several hours of charge.

guardian452 wrote:The macbook "pro" is dead, it died in 2006 (intel), 2009 (unibody), 2012 (retina), and 2016 (thunderbolt-3). They are definitely dead by now and only garbage consumables.

Yes, that's the point. Apple kit used to be upgradable and serviceable to a reasonable degree, but it's not any more, and it's the prime reason why I would never buy a current Apple product - despite buying a few Apple systems in the past.

Raion-Fox wrote:Diagnostics for modern PCs aren't anything like cars, so please stop trying to draw a false equivalence. In a car, you have hundreds of discrete components that can go wrong. For a computer, it's a handful of integrated components where you can generally draw a good guess.

Nobody at the apple store could figure out my bluetooth headphone issue. Now I have sony cellphone

Raion-Fox wrote:I'm 23 years old and can read a manual. Can you?

I also write service manuals for vehicle OEMs and did that full-time for a while (Par-Tech). I think I can read my own work.

Raion-Fox wrote:It isn't hard at all to diagnose a car. If it says, say P01000 - O2 sensor heater circuit failed Bank 1, you know the first O2 sensor is broken.

So after your $20/hr junior trainee tech replaces the sensor and it still doesn't work.. well, let's see. Could be a wiring problem, ECU input circuit... exhaust leak, the wrong part installed by some shadetree down the street ... any one of which takes several hours of diagnostics and hundreds of dollars of parts to diagnose. Are you sure you're ready to fire that parts cannon based on what some machine that the vehicle manufacturer has never heard of? Are you going to trust your customer not bring it back or write a bad review on the intertubes?

Raion-Fox wrote:Or if it says the crankshaft position signal is out of bounds, replace the CPS! Not much harder than that.

Could be faulty sensor.. could be the wrong part installed, could be wiring, could be a bad ECU flash, I've seen missing teeth on the reluctor wheel or even the wrong reluctor wheel installed (not sure how that one happened... took 3 days to figure out on an early-00's ford bus with the 6.8L). The majority of issues I see are the wrong part, looking at the wrong thing, see a lot of counterfeit and off-brand parts, wrong software installed on the correct part, and of course wiring and ground issues... OBD2 is great pie-in-the-sky future stuff, but we are nowhere near ready to throw out the o-scope and CAN sniffer yet.

But I see the other side... I get phone calls when other mechanics (dealer and indy) get stuck, or their technicians make problems worse instead of better. I never get to see the basic R&R job where everything goes smoothly except regular maintenance on my own car. And not a whole lot to go wrong on an MX-5, I'm afraid.

Guarantee it won't last 100k without massively expensive repairs. I worked in a mechanic shop and replaced engines in those all the time. The cheap rubber hoses they use for coolant redirection rot, the coolant leaks out and the headgasket blows. Bye bye engine.

I find this a difficult claim to take seriously because 2015 was the first year for this configuration. How many 2015+ LX/LC's with the 3.6 did you replace the motor in? *Lots* of police cars with that motor, and they are getting old now. These cars definitely have their fair share of issues, any car does, and I trust FCA less than a lot of other makes, but all in all they're solid. 10 years ago the 6 was a dog (was it still the 2.7?) but they are a world apart. A blown coolant hose is a neglect issue. They should be inspected regardless of the car make/model/year.

guardian452 wrote:RX7's don't leak oil, they burn it

Not if you try running them in freezing cold weather. They will leak from the front seal because it won't expand from the cold.[/quote] I had an '83 (with carburetor!) it ran alright for a few years, sold it when I moved back to USA, but I guess it just doesn't get that cold in Ontario Mine was pretty low-miles, too.

Last edited by guardian452 on Sun Mar 05, 2017 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

guardian452 wrote:Nobody at the apple store could figure out my bluetooth headphone issue. Now I have sony cellphone

I use a Nexus 5X.

guardian452 wrote: I also write service manuals for vehicle OEMs and did that full-time for a while (Par-Tech). I think I can read my own work.

I see.

guardian452 wrote:So after your $35/hr junior trainee tech replaces the sensor and it still doesn't work.. well, let's see. Could be a wiring problem, ECU input circuit... exhaust leak, the wrong part installed by some shadetree down the street ... any one of which takes several hours of diagnostics and hundreds of dollars of parts to diagnose. Are you sure you're ready to fire that parts cannon based on what some machine that the vehicle manufacturer has never heard of? Are you going to trust your customer not bring it back or write a bad review on the intertubes?

It can be any of those, yeah. But, 9/10 it's the O2 sensor. And I do understand the whole mechanics doing the work wrong - I wasn't even ASE and I was doing better work than some of the shops down the street at the place. I made mistakes, sure, but I never once grumbled about working on a car regardless of the manufacturer - except Audis and a few others. Audi's manual for pretty much anything is remove a hundred components first and THEN do the work. The exact opposite of intuitive.

We did have bad reviews but the manager of the shop is a good friend of mine. He knew if I made a mistake, I'd pay for it without question. Which I did. First week on the job, I didn't torque a driveshaft down properly, the customer's shaft dropped out 3 days later. I did the repair work for free and we offered the customer a credit for next time they came in.

The point was that cars made after 1996 have OBD and are mostly mechanical vs a computer which is mostly electronic. While I'd love an OBD2-like interface to be standardized across computer manufacturers and have more sophisticated repair procedures, the industry isn't interested in something like that which would cost a fortune. In computers, if your SCSI bus fails, it could be the controller, any number of capacitors, the connector, the IRQ lines going to the CPU, etc. And I don't see a diagnostic system like that being better.

The point me, John, and several others were making was that Apple has done nothing to advance the field of computer repair and by gluing, soldering and integrating everything into one expensive board, they're moving backwards, instead of forwards. Now, my Thinkpad, the CPU is socketed (I upgraded it!) the RAM is 100% removable, both drives are standard SATA connectors and the majority of components are easily replaceable. On a modern Apple computer, outside of the trash bin Mac Pro, I don't think there's any you can replace the RAM on. They've neutered the Mini so you have to get an iMac to get any functionality, they purposefully are obsoleting their machines to say "Fuck you customer. Buy more of our overpriced shit."

guardian452 wrote:Could be faulty sensor.. could be the wrong part installed, could be wiring, could be a bad ECU flash, I've seen missing teeth on the reluctor wheel or even the wrong reluctor wheel installed (not sure how that one happened... took 3 days to figure out on an early-00's ford bus with the 6.8L). The majority of issues I see are the wrong part, looking at the wrong thing, see a lot of counterfeit and off-brand parts, and of course wiring and ground issues...

That's certainly different from my own experiences.

guardian452 wrote:But I see the other side... I get phone calls when other mechanics (dealer and indy) get stuck, or their technicians make problems worse instead of better. I never get to see the basic R&R job where everything goes smoothly except regular maintenance on my own car. And not a whole lot to go wrong on an MX-5, I'm afraid.

I have a 99 NB. Its a rust bucket but it keeps going. I like the non-interference engine design, the light weight and the fact everything is easy to get to.

guardian452 wrote:I find this a difficult claim to take seriously because 2015 was the first year for this configuration. How many 2015+ LX/LC's with the 3.6 did you replace the motor in? *Lots* of police cars with that motor, and they are getting old now. These cars definitely have their fair share of issues, any car does, and I trust FCA less than a lot of other makes, but all in all they're solid. 10 years ago the 6 was a dog (was it still the 2.7?) but they are a world apart. A blown coolant hose is a neglect issue. They should be inspected regardless of the car make/model/year.

The 3.6L is used in many Chryslers. I have mostly experience with the previous generation of the Challenger, as you may expect. But I have a lot of experience with the drivetrain used in those cars. I don't consider a coolant hose break at 100-120k a neglect issue. My first car, a '95 BMW 5 series had the original branded radiator hoses up to 200k. The reason I know is it was the older OEM style that was made during its production. Then the radiator fan got out of balance and slashed the hoses - I consider that impressive as the fan and clutch were original on the car for it to have last that long. It also didn't blow the headgasket from this, which is surprising as my ex drove it a mile home with temp well into the red. She was an idiot though.

The Pentastar's weak points are its heads warp super easily, it has delicate timing chain guides, the oil passages are undersized requiring lighter weights of oil than I'd put in an engine of its design and the poor dimensional tolerances of the valves inevitably means valve seals leak and burn oil prematurely.

guardian452 wrote:I had an '83 (with carburetor!) it ran alright for a few years, sold it when I moved back to USA, but I guess it just doesn't get that cold in Ontario Mine was pretty low-miles, too.

Your '83 is not the FCs that I have experience with. FCs had oil leakage bad from the front seals in sub-zero weather.

The point stands - if Apple can't make hardware that we can service, repair, maintain, and upgrade, they will continue this slide into being nothing more than the Chrysler of the computer world. Or worse, the Daewoo (GM absorbed Daewoo and is heading that way themselves). Daewoo is synonymous with the Korean word for shit.

commodorejohn wrote:You don't understand, tomvos! It has to be that way!! We'll never get to The Future if you ignorant cavemen keep holding us back with demands for archaic non-solderered connectors!!!

It was for Lion (2011) where the Ars Technica Siracusa review said something like "It appears Apple has gotten tired of dragging us kicking and screaming into the future, and has simply left without us." It's what Apple does best

If that - if a world where everything is disposable and we have to rely on the benevolence and continued support (and continued existence) of the manufacturer for even minor repairs and upgrades - is "the future," then the future can get bent. I'll happily stay back here with the cavemen, and maybe we can build a less stupid future in the ashes when the Future of Inevitable Garbage has finally crashed and burned. Unga fuckin' bunga, baby.

I have a 2008 Aluminium MacBook (not a MacBook pro) which has 8GB ram and 240GB SSD running El Capitan. Two nice latches allow full access to the bottom easily and quickly, without screws o.0. Browsing, Office stuff, gimp, xCode all run fine.

OSX Lion was hardcoded not to install on a colleagues 2009 unibody MacBook with better specs than my Aluminium MacBook, blatant built-in obsolesce? Why Apple keep supporting my model idk, but it makes it possibly the best laptop Apple have ever made imo with great bang for buck (still kicking and practical 9 years later!). Only wish it had a backlit keyboard .

Apple and OSX has never struck me as the 'power user' type, productive user maybe o.0. They package everything up in as easy to manage digestible form, from the slightly above average COTS components, to the pretty un-customisable GUI all designed to remove the need for user interaction at a level that might cause problems. While its less to go right for 'power-users', its less to go wrong for non 'power-users', more importantly someone who doesn't know they are doing can't fook it up o.0.

When they get it right, they get it right which imo they did with Snow Leopard. I never had any major Unix compatibility issue with it and loved the fact (with the swipe of a few fingers) I could go from a GUI to a nice high-res console which I used to use vim on (build in xCode, but code in vim!). I was using it for iOS development until about 2012, about the time they started forcing Obj-C for everything in the iOS framework (originally iOS 1.x - 3.x you could write c/c++ up to and including elements of the view layer, they quickly started to stop this behaviour ).

Given how much Apple sandbox, I was surprised at the level of Unix compatibility there was (even X11). In Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, for about 4 years I really was in computing bliss, not worried about upgrades (everything was maxed out on my Aluminium MacBook pretty early one in its life), not worried about customisation, there was enough capability for me to script and automate what I required (for daily use, heavier work would be done on a non-OSX workstation)... Then they changed it (forcefully, the way Apple do), boo hoo... still have my iPhone4 (which is just about failing with youtube, and hangs annoyingly a lot of the time, but still makes phone calls and can browse), but gave the MacBook to my mum with strict instructions not to sell (she loves it too o.0), and I haven't gone back since, apart from a brief stint last year (El Capitan), but not enough to warrant any long term use. Better computational performance can be had cheaper elsewhere, this has always been the case, but its not 'the Apple' way.

LFS, OSXgit, mercurialMcGuyver, James Bond.

Which ever takes your fancy, all would probably get 'the job' done. How you wish to do it defines the tools you should use. o.0.

That doesn't sound right. All 2009 MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs can run Lion, with most able to run all the way to El Capitan, and the late 2009 MacBook can run Sierra. Are you sure it wasn't an older model?